I'm new to bakery and I can bake chiffon and angel food cake alright, but everytime(3 times) I bake chocolate sponge, I always end up with something with good moisture but super stiff. What could I have done wrong and how can I make the cake more tender in texture? Thanks!

Separate the egg white and yolk, whip the white until there's a curly spike when I pick up the wisk. During the whipping process, pour in the 40g of sugar.

Add 20g sugar to the yolk and stir until the mixture gets a bit pale.

Add 40g of melted butter into the mixture and stir until the mixture is smooth. Pour 1/3 of the egg white foam into the yolk-butter mixture. Mix carefully as not to deflate the egg white. When mixed well, pour in the other 2/3 of egg white and mix.

Did you forget to mention the leavening in the recipe only, or did you forget to add it to the cake too?
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rumtscho♦Feb 3 '14 at 15:15

1

Also, what method are you using to make the cake. Method is as important as ingredients.
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GdDFeb 3 '14 at 15:28

@rumtscho the recipe says the beaten egg whites will act as the sole leavening in sponge cake. Should I add some baking soda(because I've never used baking soda except for pound cake)?
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Alex SuFeb 3 '14 at 15:39

@AlexSu I haven't seen a sponge cake leavened solely on eggs. The fat deflates the protein foam of the egg whites. What is your recipe source? If a recipe fails consistently, it is much easier to find another, working, recipe, than to try to troubleshoot the bad one. The Internet is full of great recipes for free.
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rumtscho♦Feb 3 '14 at 16:06

2 Answers
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Sponge and pound cakes contain fat. Therefore, they are not usually made with pure egg leavening. Egg leavening relies on a protein-based foam (whipped eggwhites), and fat deflates protein-based foams and/or prevents them from "curing" at high temperatures.

If you found a sponge cake recipe without chemical leavening, this is a sign for a bad recipe. The best would be to search for a better recipe, especially if you are a beginner baker. Troubleshooting baking recipes is an advanced skill which requires both experience and theoretical knowledge - certainly attainable for the average home baker, but unnecessarily hard for beginners. With the tons of recipes available at your fingertips for free, it makes more sense to search for a better one. It will give you correct ratios and temperatures and save you failures and frustration.

And a small pedantic part: what you are making here is not a sponge cake, but a pound cake. They have the same ingredients, but sponge cakes are made using the creaming method, while pound cakes use melted butter. The upside: both of them are tasty :)